


The Moon Is Gone

by KChasm



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Gen, Silly, in which the author rips off Terry Bisson, not an Imperishable Night fic, reupload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-08 01:50:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10375191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChasm/pseuds/KChasm
Summary: It's very mysterious.(Originally uploaded 2016, touhou-project.com.)





	

Reimu Hakurei stepped outdoors one chilly autumn night and discovered, to her dismay, that the moon was gone.   
  
“Huh,” she said.   
  
She had gone outdoors with the full expectation of seeing the moon, and not seeing it was more disappointing than she'd imagined. Not that she'd gone outdoors to see the moon particularly. Rather, she'd been escaping from a party. Suika had organized this one, being 1) an oni and also 2) very good at it, and the end result had been a band of youkai in her shrine (only half of which she had ever beaten up personally) with a number that had ballooned in the last twenty minutes from “small kaboodle” to “mild calamity.” It was the sort of happenstance that usually led to an incident or the destruction of her shrine, again, or both.   
  
Instead, the moon was missing.   
  
“It's a sign,” Reimu decided, and broke up the party due to incident-related reasons. Then she broke Kaguya's nose.   
  
“It wasn't us,” said Kaguya, but nasally, because her nose was broken.   
  
“You've done this before,” said Reimu.   
  
“We hid the moon before,” said Kaguya. “This is different.”   
  
“But still similar,” said Reimu.   
  
“Then we definitely didn't do it,” said Kaguya. “You can't do the same incident twice. It's tacky.”   
  
It _was_ tacky. A rabbit offered more tea, but the teapot had been broken in the fight, and there was a cat licking up the puddle, which was strange because Kaguya didn't have a cat. It had come in from the Bamboo Forest, slinking in and then through with the confidence of being a cat, and now that it had found a comfortable place for itself it was set on becoming friends, except with Kaguya, whom it scratched. Kaguya only had nine fingers, but Reimu was sure it was a coincidence, or a consequence of the fight, which was almost the same thing.   
  
“Rather than being hidden, the moon is gone,” said Eirin very dramatically, and with a new teapot.   
  
“Oh,” said Reimu.   
  
“Oh,” said Marisa, later, when Reimu had carefully beaten up the opposition. It was a precise affair. There were lists and formalities, and different patterns for bullets. Marisa had a black eye, which was a symbol and not a coincidence. “Maybe someone stole it.” (She was right.)   
  
“That can't be right,” said Reimu. “Why would you steal the moon?”   
  
“I'd use it as a nightlight,” said Marisa. In fact, the moon _was_ being used as a nightlight! It was amazing. The man who'd stolen it wasn't even from Gensokyo, but that wasn't very important. What was important was that Marisa was certifiably insane, and Reimu couldn't believe her. Eirin had filled out the certificate herself, because she had gone to university, even if the university was on the moon, which was missing. She had even run off a copy for Alice, who wasn't very important, either. Alice had taken her copy, hightailed it for her cottage in the forest, and alerted her dolls.   
  
“Someday, I'll show this to Marisa,” Alice said, to her dolls, then and also later, before Reimu beat her up, too. “I'll say, 'Marisa, I can't trust you. You're insane.'”   
  
The dolls never answered back. They had had epiphanies ever since the first beat-up, first separately and then altogether, and had consequentially decided to go on strike until all of this nonsense was done with. Unfortunately, they were in Gensokyo. It was no good. The best they could hope for was the nonsense becoming banal, which was a philosophy, and also itself banal because philosophies were all the rage, recently. It hadn't used to be that way. It had happened slowly, then all of a sudden, like that story about wheat doubling on a chessboard, but nobody played chess in Gensokyo so the simile was lost. They played shogi, instead, or go.   
  
Reimu played neither. “I need to find out who's responsible,” she said to the dolls, and then didn't, because it was too tough. It was also impossible, which was the real killer.   
  
“It can't be helped,” said Marisa.   
  
“I suppose Gensokyo doesn't really need the moon,” said Yukari.   
  
“Help,” said the Lunarians, but they weren't important at all.   
  
First, Suika organized a party, bigger this time, and as the youkai began to formalize their ruckus Reimu stood on the shrine steps and looked up at the empty sky. It was a clear autumn night in Gensokyo and she had learned something, but things were finally beginning to wind down.   
  
She pushed up her sleeves and headed back for the shrine. She had forgotten to beat up the other half.


End file.
